You asked and answered your own question. It adds some customization over coreboot, that is valuable. If you think about it, a lot of open source is like that.

Edit: I asked Bing AI this question and I'm satisfied with the result. Of course it only answered half correctly. Pasting it here

Libreboot is a downstream distribution (or fork) of coreboot which doesn’t allow non-free binaries (“blobs”), and only supports a small number of devices, the vast majority of which are over 10 years old. Libreboot also doesn’t “keep track” with coreboot; its most recent release is from mid-2016, whereas coreboot is updated regularly¹².

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Source: Conversation with Bing, 4/23/2023 (1) What is the difference between libreboot and my Librem's coreboot .... https://puri.sm/faq/what-is-the-difference-between-libreboot.... (2) coreboot - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coreboot. (3) Libreboot – Frequently Asked Questions. https://libreboot.org/faq.html. (4) What's the difference between coreboot and libreboot? : r/coreboot - Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/coreboot/comments/e68kvu/whats_the_....

The reddit discussion is severely out of date.

Yeah but I think it still resulted in the right high level answer. That libreboot is coreboot with less restrictions (,about what to include). It's adding things which don't fit into the coreboot philosophy.

It's the opposite. Libreboot removes parts of coreboot which don't fit into its philosophy.

These comments are usually downvoted but they're usually quite useful. Thanks.

I'm doing it for the first time. Didn't know it will get this negative a reaction. I feel like the answer was acceptably worded. I even pointed out that I understand half the answer was wrong. I felt like it was in the spirit of HN.

I want to see opinions and answers from actual humans, not from a Random Bullshit Generator. If I wanted to see the Random Bullshit Generator’s opinion, I would have asked it myself.

> Libreboot is a downstream distribution (or fork) of coreboot which doesn’t allow non-free binaries (“blobs”)

Libreboot does allow some blobs, if there is no good alternative, and because a mostly-free board is better than a completely non-free board according to their policy: https://libreboot.org/news/policy.html

> and only supports a small number of devices, the vast majority of which are over 10 years old.

That one’s probably accurate.

> Libreboot also doesn’t “keep track” with coreboot; its most recent release is from mid-2016, whereas coreboot is updated regularly.

The link we’re commenting on leads to a release announcement. The linked announcement mentions the previous release was 10 days ago. There was a gap in libreboot releases between September 2016 and May 2021, so the Random Bullshit Generator’s response is outdated by 2 years.

Ok, but can we calm down about this a bit? Charged wording you are using is giving more of a hateful connotation than I think is appropriate. These things are toys and I found the answer ok. I absolutely gave my own opinion and pointed out how bing AI is wrong. I understand disliking outputs from generators but I feel like this one was properly annotated by me.

Edit: In my view this is similar to when some threads start discussing tangential issues. I've seen a post about world hunger have a thread about tabs and spaces. It's fine, this is why we have a thread system.

Fortunately, Random Bullshit Generators do not have feelings, and will not get hurt by my use of the (IMO more appropriate) term to refer to them. They are overhyped, and I do not think that posting their output in HN comments leads to positive and thoughtful discussions.

They absolutely do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35668402

I like all my bullshit to be artisanal hand-made bullshit.

Pretty much +95% of the Linux distros are like this.

That's not correct. Each distro has a huge amount of code in the form of patches, packaging and installation that they handle.

Think of the manhours + resources wasted achieving/maintaining basically the same thing in slightly different ways...

Not really. Whoever created these distros had a specific vision they wanted to achieve. Debian is one thing, Arch is another. The world is richer for having both.

Debian and Arch are different enough that the argument isn't about them. The issue is the 100's of distros that could be replaced with just "install <major distro> and do apt install X" (or some other trivial thing like changing the default to KDE instead of Gnome).

If whoever is putting in the time and money to maintain those things thinks it's worth, then there must be a reason for it.

You can also replace that with "just install Windows", or "just use macOS".

Hell, you use this for anything; "why make a new album, movie, or book when there are already thousands upon thousands of them? Yours probably isn't any better!"

You completely misunderstand. Windows and Mac are different enough from every linux distro that the argument isn't about them.

And if you're going to start talking about copy-rightable works of entertainment, then yes if you write a book based off another book just with 1 extra character (analogous to "install <major distro> and do apt install X") then that book would violate copyright and should not be written. It's the lack of copyright in FOSS that allows all the pointless duplication of effort with all the almost identical linux distros.

90% of distros' "visions" is ultimately just providing a general-purpose desktop/laptop OS. There's indeed an insane amount of wasted effort, both on developers' part but also users (skill portability is an issue because no 2 Linux distros/machines are alike).

I think the original comment is more about debian,Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, etc. And then separately, Arch vs Anarchy, etc.

I would argue that those are either similar enough to not be wasteful or dissimilar enough to not be redundant. Lubuntu is just Ubuntu with some minor differences in default packages and configs; there's not enough difference there to be wasteful. OTOH, Ubuntu, at least for a long time, was genuinely much more friendly to beginners than Debian, partially just because they could get patches in faster, and partially because they had a looser standard around non-free packages. There was divergence but for a good reason, and the projects have largely collaborated over the years so that the source code changes are shared where sensible but they target slightly different audiences with different support systems. Well, there's also Canonical just being Canonical but there's no way to solve that.

Libreboot provides:

- Release engineering and testing. When Libreboot started, upstream coreboot wasn't doing releases at all; now they are, but they're still not suitable for end-users who want to use stable tested software: "Our releases aren’t primarily a vehicle for code that is stable across all boards"[0]. Downstream distributions that test on a specific range of devices (such as Libreboot, mrchromebox.tech, and vendors such as Chromebooks, Purism, System 76, ...) are still important to the ecosystem to provide stable releases. In the words of a coreboot dev: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33997880

- Pre-compiled and tested binaries, because lots of users aren't set up to build their own.

- A distribution of tools for more easily installing them than a sequence of long `flashram` incantations.

- Loads of documentation.

- Pre-configuration of common payloads, such as GRUB or SeaBIOS.

And let's not forget that the Libreboot project does contribute to upstream coreboot.

[0]: https://doc.coreboot.org/releases/checklist.html#purpose-of-...